bassist_lewis

I'm going to use the bass tonight at Malone's if anyone wants to come see (on from 10), should be fun!

Does it have a case!? I'm going to pick it up from mcnach tonight. My next gig is this Saturday at Malone's in Edinburgh, then Finnegan's Wake on the 6th of February and Malone's again in the 8th, for whoever wants to get it next.

It's about a 55/45 split this tax year in favour of my non-music job, I live in my own flat and receive no financial help from parents or spouses (I do use my girlfriend's car but we split insurance, tax, MOT etc)

Just want to be clear, I'm not judging people that decided against it, as RussFM pointed out you can buy better gear more easily with a consistent salaried job - as well as pay for a car, ironically without which it's very difficult to make a living from music! I just see myself being a much happier making a living entirely or predominantly from music

So, over Xmas and new year I've met up with family I only see when the moon is blue and the question of what I'm doing with my life inevitably comes up. My uncle asked, 'what's you're plan b' and implied I should stop pursuing music and get a real job so I can earn more money and have a "career", my mother has also spoken to (at?) me on a few occasions about getting a trade. I have no intent of pursuing another career right now, I'm 24 (and a 1/2), it's 4 years exactly since I decided to consciously be a musician and I've been earning increasing sums of money 3 and a 1/2 of those 4 years (mainly through weddings) and I honestly don't feel that I've allowed anywhere near enough time to think that my career is going nowhere. I'm asking those who changed their minds regarding a career in music when and why they made the decision, and if I'm just being stubborn about sticking to my guns.

Cool, I'll drop in!

At the moment I'm pretty available evenings next week,where's your gig on the 16th?

What sort of bass is it? I have a gig on the 18th at Malone's in Edinburgh, then one a week from the 6th of Feb. I live in Edinburgh (Newhaven area)

ForScore is great for charts you have in PDF format (I think you can convert iRealb charts to PDF) and organise them into sets, by artist, genre, tags, very useful app. If you want to write notation get Notion, bit pricey but very good.

Like any instrument singers have their lowest note and their highest and should be able to sing every note in between, except that range is fairly unique to the singer in question (though tenors, sopranos etc have historically standardised ranges). singing every song in C would actually be more difficult than it sounds, take Locked Out of Heaven, which is in F, if we're to transpose that up a 5th it would be imossible for a man to sing it (it's very very high anyway), a 4th lower and it'd sound rubbish. I suggest you have a go at singing yourself, then you'll understand.

I played a couple of house tunes on Friday for a gig with a soul choir and the bass lines were both pretty good. Not as hooky as that one but grooving nonetheless.

I don't of an online resource but the Latin Bass Book by Oscar Stagnaro is an excellent book, both for sight reading and learning the idiosyncrasies of the style. Pricey though :S

If roots is what your comfortable with do that for the time being. From what I can tell an examiner isn't necessarily looking for you to tap out altered scales in quintuplets (not on every performance anyway) they're after a strong MUSICAL performance. Keep shedding all your arpeggios and scales and eventually they'll start to feel 'right'. As Bilbo says improvising, and music generally, is a lifetime's work.

I separate performing and practicing in my mind which seems to translate directly to your convergent and divergent. Practice, so I read in "Talent Is Overrated: What Really Seperates World Class Performers From Everybody Else", should be an effort , you should be working hard and being aware of everything you're doing and adjusting. It should be exhausting! Performing on the other hand should be completely unconscious, it should be easy. Studies on improvising musicians found that when improvising there was hardly any activity in their frontal cortex - where conscious thought occurs. Equally you could practice that skill as well at home by jamming to a tune or a loop or playing any old bollocks while watching TV.

Having recently began (begun?) teach I've found that being aware of the little things that make playing easier is very important. One of my students is a complete novice so her technique is in constant need of tweaking, another has some experience playing guitar and even has a decent amount of harmonic knowledge but again being able to break down technique and harmonic concepts for him has been very productive. With learning I prefer baby steps. I do find them frustrating at times but by being thorough you avoid making bad habits.

They do come highly recommended - not just by jazzers, I've read some very positive reviews by self-proclaimed 'normal' bass players - so if you know exactly what you want you're likely to come away with an amazing instrument you'll play forevermore. And Foderas have good resale value so if you don't like it you'd get a good price for it (if you're patient) and you can buy something else or go with your second plan of a combination of Fenders and Musicmans.

6 strings are a bit of a marmite thing. And someone who isn't sure is more likely to buy second hand rather than potentially waste money on a brand new one

I've done some experiments with my fretless 6 string, capo-ing it 4 inches from the nut and the B-string sounded good and probably only needed a slight raise in action to be realistically playable. But because that has a 5 piece thru-neck I also did the same with my lakland - sort of, it's fretted and 35" scale - and similar results.

[quote name='eude' timestamp='1381310952' post='2237229'] Having heard Owain's stuff, the low B on his basses certainly sounds amazing, would be inetersted to see what it feels like! The OBS model is insanely expesnive though, but Callowhill are doing a cheaper bass based on some of the same principals, a kinda P Bass style thing called the MPB, they start at $1950 with a passive jobby with a single pickup, with upcharges from there. There's more details on the Facebox page, the Callowhill website is always behind the times a bit... [/quote] The first picture of a complete MPB is up on the CallowHill FB page, looks pretty cool. I'd still like to know how the neck is made and get some recordings though!

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1385411224' post='2288025'] Which gentlemen have claimed this and what kind of music and bass lines do they claim are simpler these days? Seems to be an awful lot of generalisations here. My opinion -there were less monster players around back then, but the electric bass was at an earlier stage of its evolution as an instrument and therefore said exponents had a bigger impact upon the listener. [/quote] I was generalising to be concise, I know quite a bit of modern music with great bass playing - Lettuce, PSP, The Aristocrats, The Roots - but those are all quite obscure. As for the gentlemen in question there have been several I've met and a few people on this forum, and tbh they're not even necessarily older than me, plenty of guys my age or younger moan about current music.

I'm talking about the Korean cross-dressing kind, I feel sorry for previous generations who maybe only had one or two experiences of such players. We really do live in a golden era...

Hmmm... say both. Keep all variables the same except the era

So these days, as I've heard many a more experienced gentleman claim, music is a bit simpler and the bass lines aren't as good, and back in the 60s, 70s and 80s (people aren't quite nostalgic about the 90s yet) bass lines were - or could be - more interesting and a more prominent part of the song. Yet, these days there seem to be legions of bass players shredding through changes and slapping the s@@t out of there basses, and back in said nostalgic decades there seem to have only been a few such monster players. Now, I'm only 24 so maybe it's just how it seems looking back now... but why is it that in an era where music is predominantly dead simple and focused entirely on the singer there are lots of super techy shreddy bass players, and back when basslines were more prominent and generally more interesting there were comparatively few mental slippers? Discuss slappers... not into slippers...

Reverb and groove are completely unrelated. Ignorant singer bulls@&t

That's what I like about the 5, once on a gig the singer called Living on a Prayer, then a moment later said, in D, I jumped straight in. Ignoring the fact that the song is actually in G starting on Em, this would have been a total headf##k on a 4 drop tuning... but I love playing my 4!! I need something as comfortable as my 4 but with a low B, the only solution I can think of is a 5 string shorty like a callowhill OBS or MPB, or a custom build.